Come up with a Motto/Slogan for World of Wonder.
Use 15 words or less to describe me and my blog. Funny, witty, and alliterative entries encouraged.

Contest 2- Intended for the Visually Minded (Graphic designers, artists, folks that play with computers)

Come up with a Banner for World of Wonder. (EDIT: 950x200-450 in size)
Use graphics, images, drawings or other visual media to convey my personality and my blog. Using references from older posts, repeating themes of posts or comments, or ridiculous riffs on stuff I've said are welcome.

What are the rules?
1- No more than 4 entries per entrant. I don't care if they are all in the same contest or spread out over both, but you only get 4 chances.

2- It's my blog, and my birthday. I pick the winner of each contest with my own personal metrics.

3- You have a month to enter! Entries must be sent by email (available in my profile) and received by my birthday: 10:00 AM CENTRAL STANDARD TIME, Saturday, February 12, 2011.

What do I win?

I am working on an awesome looty prize for each winner- but because it's a birthday, the presents are a surprise.They will most likely have some relevance to miniatures and/or roleplaying in some way. It's entirely possible I will tailor the prizes to match the entrant, but I am not telling yet.

--I totally promise they will NOT! be lame-- Be assured that if you win, you'll get something wonderful... because it's my world, and I love to bring out the childlike wonder all around me.

I'll do a weekly post with updates on number of entries and what kinds of fabulous goodies you might win as the month goes on. Spread the word- I want this to be kind of like a virtual party, and the more, the merrier in my book!

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Our league is doing escalation play starting at 750 and I got my first game in. Our TO was relentless in making sure I had an opponent as I arrived later than most of the usual crowd (but not too late for league start).

I lost, but I had a blast.

I faced a "Zoom-Dar" player with a list roughly like so:

FarSeer
Seer Council x4

2 x Guardian Jetbikes (6)
Warlock w/Embolden
He had a couple psychic powers- Fortune among them. That became important later.

We used funky rules (Rules of Engagement) I've never seen before for deployment, with equally weird objective determination rules. We wound up with table quarters as deployment and my objective was to reduce his army to below 25%. His was to control 2 objectives.

I threw out my Landspeeder as a distraction, held the Termies in reserve to Deep Strike, and moved both Cru Squads (one to protect my objective -dime-, and one bunkered up in the Rhino). -- I forgot that the Landspeeder can deepstrike, or I probably should have done that.

I left a Cru squad to guard one objective, and sent Termies over to block the other. It didn't hurt that there were Guardians to shoot at that way, either.

You can see the top of my Terminator at the very bottom of the picture. His Guardians are in range.

After the shooting phase was over. Oh yeah, Assault Cannons all the way!

Here's where something I planned to do (and did) worked: I made him come to me in assault.

I used the Rhino and the guys in it to bottle up the pass between the two terrain pieces, and my opponent sent 10 or so jetbikes into that area for close combat. After three full rounds of assaulting, only his Farseer and my EC were left.

I must say, the EC is a frickin BEAST in CC. He simply WOULD NOT DIE and kept dealing damage like no tomorrow. EC took several jetbikes by himself. I had the Farseer dead to rights 4 or 5 times over, but his ability to infinitely reroll failed saves kept him alive. This squad eventually died of attrition to the dang near invulnerable Farseer. I could (and probably should) have moved this squad further onto the field and into his deployment zone to attain my objective. However, having done what I did, I kept his very mobile force bogged down for 3 turns. Not bad overall.

Over on the other side of the board, the Termies were doing their job- scaring the crap out of my opponent. He eventually moved jetbikes towards my objective, which was under the overhang of the building seen in picture 2. Rather than stay put like I planned, I moved forward towards his squad. This is probably where I lost the game. By moving, I opened an avenue for a separate group of jetbikes to zip in and sit on the objective. He used the "bait squad" to keep the Termies busy and hoped simply to survive long enough for the game to end.

The game ended with his Guardian squad blowed up real good, but my Termies more too far away to be contesting the objective marker, so he got a win.

What I learned:

1- Stick with your plans. I originally planned to have Termies baby sit the objective marker, and moved them for some dumb reason I don't even remember.

2- Remember your options. I forgot my Landspeeder could deepstrike. I forgot my Rhino had smoke. I forgot how lascannons work. All of these could have made a big impact on the game if I had used my available options more wisely.

3-Ask questions if you don't know. Between his armaments and his abilities, there was a ton about his Eldar that was more than a little confusing. I asked him to explain it several times for reasons I'll go into below.

What I need to work on:

1- Assault. Despite doing a LOT of it, I am still confused about a couple aspects. I am sure some of it will come with time, but reading the rules again (and maybe again after that) will help as well.

2-Wound Wrapping- I don't understand it, and my opponent did NOT help at all. I'll discuss that later, too.

3-Understanding Deployment - because we are using an alternate rulesset, this will be even HARDER for me. However, if I had understood the PREMISE more clearly, I might have had a much different approach.

On my opponent: He's a very friendly, fun guy. He's easy to talk to and was exceptionally patient as I looked up practically every single rule throughout the game. [I told him it was not because I didn't believe him, it was because I was trying to learn the rules- seeing the rules in connection to what was happening made a HUGE impact and I "get it" a lot better now.] However, there were a couple things that were tough for me to deal with.

He was seriously disorganized. He didn't have any idea that it was League, or that we were using Escalation, and didn't have a list. He started putting models on the table before having anything remotely like a final FOC'd list. He forgot to put 2 models on the board and then "remembered them" on turn 3. (No I didn't let him put them on.) He couldn't explain his model's abilities well. If he had his Codex or rules, I never saw them. He explained wound wrapping in different ways in several instances that lead me to think he either didn't understand it or there was something funny going on.

I'm sure I had things that were tough to deal with, too. I honestly looked up EVERYTHING because I simply didn't know even the base stat lines on my stuff. (I do now!) I asked the same question about 20 times (probably because his answer stunk, but I know it must have been annoying). I rolled like crazy- I think I failed 1 save outright all night.

No matter what, I had a blast. I really enjoyed getting from theory to action. It felt good to DO it, rather than talk about it.

Next week is 750 again, and I'm going to have to work on the list. That Landspeeder either has to go or be rethought...

Monday, January 10, 2011

So I have this lovely group of marines, all suited up and ready to be pressed into service. The figures are all assembled (well, with the exception of 2 that have lost their arms) and almost all are painted, too.

What more could a girl ask for?

They could not be garish grey and orange. They were modeled after a local high school team's colors and the orange on these guys is TRULY unfortunate. Have a look:

Yikes.

So the natural solution is to strip, prime, and repaint.

I threw the models I want to use at 40K into the dip, put the cover on them, and then did chores for a while. I came back to relieve these models of their orange frocks, and found serious disappointment.

Perhaps there is some special trick of which I am unaware, or perhaps there's a formula that helps ease the paint off of little men, (or maybe these guys were painted with GLUE and not paint) but most of the models in question are still sporting some (if not all) of their former threads. Have a gander at this gent:

You can see some of my efforts- the orange on the sword is starting to be removed, and the face is nice and bland.

Others behaved much more nicely, and showed their understuff far more willingly. Perhaps they are exhibitionists? But even in the same batch, I got varying results.

The guy on the left, as you can see, is ready to be reprimed and designated in colors of my choosing. The guy on the right is a stalwart to his company (I think Ultramarines due to the logo on his shoulder) and refuses to be sent to another command.

I've removed paint before, but most of the models were white or tan- and so the paint was easier to remove. Most of the fellows in my force are dark grey or black and are less cooperative. An example can be seen here:

Same methods, much different results. That guy with the bolter was a breeze, but "chainswords, yo" is driving me batty.

I discovered that a few wanted to take things off this morning, after they'd dried off from the tub. Here's one:

Frightful as he is, this is a far shot less paint than last night when I gave up and hit the hay.

These guys were in the drink for at least an hour, with an equal amount of time being scrubbed, and these are my results. My last time out, it went much faster- so I'm wondering if I was lucky, or if there's more for me to learn.

I did pick up a few things on my own. As I went along, I discovered little tricks- brushing in a circular motion seems to work best. Dipping the brush in the juice prior to scrubbing certainly helps. Apparently, despite my proficiency in such, swearing does not do a darn thing to help. Please note that I didn't believe it, and tried several variations before accepting that verbal denigration is not the best method for removing paint from minis. I'm more than a little persistent, if just a slight bit dense.

Regardless of what my guys LOOK like, I have a game tonight and I'm eager to play. I am pretty sure I'll get trounced (and honestly, I expect to do so for a few months until I get my feet under me), but I don't mind. Most of the guys in our league are fun to be around and will give me pointers as I play.

I'll try to have a report of how my game goes later this week and possibly pictures, although I am not sure I want to subject you guys to that kind of torture. Thank goodness this isn't a comp event, or I'd be toast.

[maybe a teeny tiny sander would work....]

Please feel free to share any similar tales of woe, or tips you might have to pass along.